Late last night, former Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block tweeted out that he had done some research to attempt to quantify the “Oprah Effect” — that is, the number of users who signed up for Twitter after Oprah featured the service on her show on Friday. The number he came to? 1.2 million.
So did 1.2 million people actually sign up for Twitter as a result of Oprah? It’s possible, but tracking down this data is a bit tricky. I asked Block what method he used, and he told me he looked at the user ID on a Twitter account from early Friday versus one from the afternoon on Sunday. You see, while most people only know their Twitter name, if you look at the RSS feed for your Twitter account, you’ll see a number assigned to it — that’s your user ID, and Twitter increments it upward as new people sign up.
An account I created just now, for example, has an ID of 33471207. One I created on Friday night (a few hours post-Oprah) had an ID 32779621. Does this mean 700,000 signed up between then and now? Probably not. Twitter has a lot of users, but it does not have 33 million. The reason the user IDs are that high is because Twitter stopped incrementing the number sequentially in March 2007. While it’s not entirely clear what method it switched to, at least one theory had it going back and forth between sequential and increments of 10.
If that pattern is correct — and there isn’t much to suggest that it is, but bear with me — then it would probably make sense to divide any number you get by 5 (half of 10 because it’s not always going up by 10). But, as I noted, my first number was from Friday night. That was a few hours after the show, and likely after many of the new users had finished signing up. So I went back to look at other users who likely signed up around the same time.
Oprah, herself, isn’t a good one to use because while she started tweeting on Friday, her account was actually created in March — 2007, as Twitterholic notes. I’m pretty sure someone else had control of it until about a week ago when Oprah took it over. But Gayle King, editor of Oprah’s O magazine, did sign up right around then. She technically signed up on April 16, the day before the Oprah show. Her ID is 29546945.
But, remember that Thursday was the crazy race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to be the first Twitter user with a million followers. It’s likely that a lot of people signed up that day as well, just to join that race. So King’s number isn’t perfect either. But let’s just say that when Oprah started tweeting, the user IDs were probably around 30000000. That means that between then and now it has gone up nearly 3.5 million ID numbers. Divide by 5 and you get 700,000.
Again, that’s all contingent on an assumption that Twitter is incrementing the numbers in this odd rotation — which is far from a sure thing. But it’s certainly not doing it entirely sequentially, so it’s not to unreasonable to think that the number of users that signed up between Oprah’s show on Friday and today is somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million.
And that’s huge. Almost exactly a year ago, we noted that Twitter likely had somewhere just north of a million total users. The service has exploded in popularity since then, and recent estimates have it somewhere in the 5 to 10 million users range. That means that Oprah may have helped bring on a significant percentage of new users in just a few days. Not that it’s shocking in the least. Yes, some of those users would have signed up anyway, some were there for the Kutcher/CNN showdown, and a lot are likely spam. But a very good chunk are thanks to Oprah.
Naturally, I asked Twitter for some actual numbers to share, and co-founder Biz Stone said they hadn’t planned to release any, but thought it might be interesting, and that he’d look into it this week. So you can probably expect a blog post from him sometime this week, though I’m sure it will be vague, showing spikes in sign-ups in relation to other days — rather than actual numbers.
I am wondering if Twitter bought Cuil’s PR guys (but have a working product). Microsoft should use them too.
Dear Steve Jobs,
Since you left, Twitter is the only thing we hear of. It seems there no more exciting product out there. can you please return?
Oo
This MG dude reports only non-sense stuff. TechCrunch, stop this Twitter bullsh!t already.
Twitter must be loving the celebrity influx – you couldn’t ask for a better way to bring people to your product. Gotta ask at what point this is going to just become a celebrity haunt that us mere mortals simply watch and don’t participate. I can’t keep count of the RT’s of the same celebrity comment that come through.
Cool. Twitter is making news everyday. Perfect example of clever, celebrity marketing. As you say, Twitter looks like it is no place for all of us anymore…
Next they’ll be on Ellen’s show and will only get about an extra 10 million users *rolls eyes*
jajajaja that’s was hilarious…
jajajaja is the new hahahaha
as much as i would like to like your articles, some of them [like this] make you sound silly
lot of ‘likes’ in there for something you don’t like.
Please, give up the Twitter posts… This is getting so freaking annoying. What the news about? Oh yes, how many people joined Twitter thanks to Oprah. Seriously, who gives a s**t? Do you have some type of agreement with Twitter to advertise for them at least once a day on TC???
Twitter spends more money for PR than Apple. MG dude, how much cut do you get?
Twitter certainly is going the celebrity way. Kutcher, Oprah and then, probably someone from the Congress or maybe White House. What better way to promote a product that is already on everyone’s lips?
congress is already on twitter…
http://twitter....m/johnculberson
Think this year will be called Twitter year in the future. Like in the time of the Beatles/Hippies, the world is gonna be of two kinds – twitterians and non-twitterians. Then, “How to use Twitter effectively” will be subject of school text books. Maybe there will be a twitter-club in every rural district…maybe the third-world countries would be taught the etiquette of Twitter..this and much more…
Just think. Are we not making a BIG thing of just-another product which has xxxxxxxxx visitors?
I looked at the RSS feeds for 29546945 through 29546980 (so 36 of them), and each had a unique user, although a few are protected (as you’d expect).
Maybe to prove your theory that some numbers are skipped, you could do a little research and find a block of numbers near this that does NOT have a unique user assigned to it.
Okay kids. I had to say something about all of this. Let’s just say Mr. Kusher may not like what I wrote about him “, “Thoughts on Twitter and Celebrities”:
http://halleysc...elebrities.html
A quote from that blog post:
“He’s a pretty boy with a pretty face — a thing MSM loves, especially TV. Television producers love pretty and not-so-pretty pictures — just as they can’t get enough of police chases and catastrophes and fire engines and other things toddlers love. Toddlers love shiny junk they find on the beach. In TV, all that glitters IS gold.
The Twitter story became bigger on Friday, when Ashton “appeared” on Oprah and she joined Twitter as well. His promise to “appear” on Oprah actually was a Skype video appearance, not a real jump-up-and-down-on-the-couch type appearance. These celebrities seem interested in using Twitter to help others, a noble stance … to reach out to some community in need … but they haven’t bothered to reach out to the Twitter community oddly enough.
Unlike Scoble, who follows 88,562 people, and that is MORE people than the vast number of people who follow him, Mr. Kutcher only follows 84 people but has 1.2M followers.
ETC. “
Why should Ashton follow a million? How is that even possible? If you want to be followed, show some love. Give someone a reason to follow you…
You’re obviously not following Ashton. If you were, your comment would have a better tone. Or do you just want to go with the old school negative hype to get people to read your blog?
We’re New School. Positive, Informative and Creative. Get the PICture. LOL.
Seriously, I’ll read your blog. You don’t have to be negative to get attention. Much Love, Tamona Renee
I read your blog. The billboard comment is not a fact.
A good insight, Halley. Well ridiculed as well.
Halley, interestingly, one of the celebrities with a worse follower-to-following ratio is Oprah Winfrey herself. I’m not judging whether that’s bad or not, as they are free to use Twitter how ever they wish. But if someone like Mr Kutcher professes to be so “in” to Twitter and new media, then I would expect he would understand the need to exhibit a better follow-back ratio, given that modern marketing seems to believe one should be “one” with the audience. On that note I agree with you.
It looks like you and I had similar thoughts on this issue:
http://jackyan....-famous-or.html
Oprah, the queen of social media!
Twitter is going to become the next MySpace with all these celebrities. Although celebrities aren’t poison I’m reading a lot about Community Managers handling accounts for the stars – with a few exceptions – which I don’t agree with!
The obsession with numbers and follower counts is increasing and quantity over quality is changing the shape of the service. Don’t get me wrong I love Twitter but there needs to be more organisation in finding relevence not just hashtags and boolean results but like minded people and not just fanatics following the stars and the top 100 recommended lists!
I joined on Saturday ’cause I had just gotten around to it. I made the decision to join Friday morning after watching Ashton’s prerecording UStream show. It’s a big deal and I’m only worried that those in “hunt” of celebrity will miss the big picture. I have not be active in any other form of social media because I believe it can be too “high school” for me. Twitter gives you the ability to receive “direct” information from multiple personalities. So, I follow Diddy ’cause I have always admired his business skills. Now that I know he’s a nice guy, I’m going to run and purchase his album. I’ve always thought of Ashton as wise beyond his years. However, I couldn’t confirm it because of the roles he chooses to play in movies. Now that I know he is extremely caring and intelligent, I may just force myself to watch “Dude. Where’s My Car?” When I want to sip some tea, I read tweets from Moon Frye ’cause I find her spiritually grounded. I follow Oprah too. Only because I’m proud of her for taking a step to being more connected. Now she’ll find out why it’s so hard to get a ticket to her show. Cut out the middle man!
I want Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Tyler Perry, Samuel Jackson and Will Smith to join. These are individuals that inspire me to be better from a far. I could imagine the good they would do a tweet away.
I agree that an oridinary joe like myself can get lost. However, I believe that by just being myself, the celebrities will follow me too. That’s the beauty of Twitterland. Got that from Oprah. lol.
Right now, I’d be happy if I could get my friends and family to follow me. We are able to set up accounts but we’re not able to find each other. I know the co-founders of Twitter will have it resolved soon.
Tweet On!
Tamona Renee, Love Koach
With O and AK coming on board, Twitter is to the Internet what People Magazine is to print. http://www.dogw...have-in-common/
Twitter’s one of those platforms that I just don’t get. I’ll be honest about it, I see people like Oprah tweet and stuff but I’m not sure about this whole microblogging thing as a way to actually make money.
hmm it’s look like twitter is every where now
I think a lot of celebs miss the point of Twitter – it’s about social NETWORKING, not social BROADCASTING. If all they do is tweet about themselves and never engage in conversation and follow people back, then what is the point of that?
There are celebs out there like Russell Brand who really engage with their fans, even if they don’t follow back. Without the conversation, Twitter is just a whole bunch of pointless noise…
Your broadcasting point is perfectly correct, but then Twitter was never designed for what it’s becoming.
Celebs are using it differently as a way of broadcasting direct from the horses mouth rather than the usual media avenues which I imagine distort the truth some what.
But whatever, I’m so bored with Facebook that Twitter is going to provide a good diversion until something better comes along.
@james Twitter has eroded my attention span so much that I got bored halfway through your reply and a quarter of the way through my reply to your reply.. but I pushed onward and finished anyway…
This gives me an idea. Twi.com – the 2 word nano-blogging tool.
F*** it!
I believe you are wrong.
It is called a microblogging service. One-to-many like blogging, but shorter. Conversation’s do not work very well in twitter because there is no threading.
I actually saw that Oprah episode since I was home that day. Very interesting. Ellen Degeneres made me rofl with her book cover tweet.
I don’t think that 1.8million people signed in, why? There is only 14 million users that from 11.500.000 Are real users, and the rest of them unused, or inactive.
How do I know this?
Just ask @Ev
Just thought I’d comment on the non-sequential numbering scheme.
Most database systems provide an “auto-increment” feature that makes a unique index number for each entry (record in DB paralance) where each record in the case would correspond to an individual user.
On highly scaled systems, DB read operations and write operations are separated. To further allow for scale, there are multiple read machine, and multiple write machines.
Since the act of “writing” to the DB creates a new record, and thus a new “autoincrement” index number, to ensure that the numerous write machines dont conflict with each others numbers they generate, each machine starts from a different number, and increments that number based on the total number of “write” machines there are.
Most likely twitter is using some version of mysql, and if so, are undoubtedly running such a “multi-master” configuration. Therefore, depending on which DB machine someones account info is created and stored on will determine what their account ID is.
Of course, they could be randomizing it, and tracking the numbers, but the aforementioned mechanism is more likely.
Here’s another good gauge:
http://search.t...ing+out+twitter
i think oprah gets too much credit. twitter has literally been everywhere and pimp by many news outlet.
I am really interested in the real numbers! Oprah sure had an effect! Lets wait and see..
Isn’t the real point here the fact that social media and microblogging tools and styles are changing how we interact with one another? When, in history, has it been possible to “hear” the live “thoughts” of a celebrity, politician, or the average Jane down the street on an unfiltered, large scale, real-time basis? Whether you like or dislike Twitter or any other social or new media tools, you have to admit that how we communicate and our expectations of human relationships has completely changed (at least, for those with access to the internet…)
I see this at the gym the first week of January every year. How many will stick around is the question.
Haha! Well put.
what a perfect way to summarize the situation
The entire world already knows right now Oprah is twittering. So what! LOL
I don’t follow @Oprah, but I’m glad to see that she has introduced her audience to Twitter. I wrote about why the “Oprahfication” of Twitter is an important step towards mainstreaming a new communication platform:
So, Will Oprah’s Audience Affect Twitter?
http://faseidl....lic/item/230692
laaaame article, who cares
And TechCrunch is LATE on spilling da beans on Oprah. I been knew this Saturday that just passed..LOL
Oprah just officially made twitter uncool! ..or was it Kushton?
I’m pretty sure Oprah contributed a lot to whatever boost twitter got. Apart from that it’s worth noting that twitter has been mentioned on the TV show, Fantastico here in Brazil and is creating a similar hype.
Fantastico was the TV show which made Orkut explode back in the day.
Very nice article.
Here’s my latest Twitter web comic: http://bit.ly/VAc15
If over a million people joined due to the “Oprah Effect”, then why does she only have a little over 420,000 followers? The other 500,000 joined because of her, but didn’t follow her? This doesn’t make any sense.
And let’s not forget the people who followed her who were there before the show…
Hi, good post. I have been thinking about this issue,so thanks for posting. I will likely be subscribing to your blog. Keep up great writing
dear oprah
i am writting this letter because i know i have found the love of my life. however we have never actualy met. i know it sounds crazy, i met her twin throu a friend and they got valerie and i talking on the phone. valerie lives in GA. and i live in MT. she has VHL desease, i am a disabled vet.
valerei say and thinks she is fat i dont know and i dont care i love her personality and everything the matters about her.
we have so much in common its almost scary.
She feels the same way I do but nether one of us can afford to go met the other, she is a hair dresser and well i am on a fix income and can not work so i do a little vol. work when i can. i have been searching for my soul mate my true love for 30 years know i have found her and cant do anything about it
do tou have any suggestions of what i / we should do next? they say love will always find a way but i am at a blank just two weeks together and i know all will be clear that we be long together, valerie has an 11 year old girl who likes me so much she told her mother to “marrie him momma”i have a 12 year old girl and a 14 year old boy and they say go for it dad. what should i do?
sincerly John R Fenner
I really don’t understand the power of Oprah. I never ever waste my time watching her.
Who really cares what Oprah is up to? Twitter will not last, its sooooo 2009, as people will say in 2010.
Con fama dinero y publicidad cualquiera puede tener tantos seguidores en twitter.